Worker at South Pole Station Pushes for a Rescue After a Stroke

Renee-Nicole Douceur, the winter manager at the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole, was sitting at her desk on Aug. 27 when she suffered a stroke.

“I looked at the screen and was like, ‘Oh my God, half the screen is missing,’ ” she said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

The station’s doctors quickly determined that Ms. Douceur should be removed as soon as possible from the isolated base, which has no M.R.I. or CT scan equipment, nor medicine to treat stroke victims, she said.

But that has not happened, and the situation has pitted Ms. Douceur and her family against Raytheon Polar Services, which manages the station through a contract with the National Science Foundation. Both Raytheon and the science foundation say that it would be too dangerous to send a rescue plane to the South Pole now and that Ms. Douceur’s condition is not life-threatening.

“During the winter period, extremely cold temperatures and high winds make an extraction dangerous for all involved, passengers as well as crew,” said Jon Kasle, a Raytheon spokesman, “and such an extraction is considered only in life-threatening conditions.”

Ms. Douceur, 58, of Seabrook, N.H., is in stable condition but said she had partial vision loss in both eyes. She is on medical leave from her job and spends part of every day on an oxygen therapy device that helps her breathe in the high altitude, she said.

Photo

Renee-Nicole Douceur, 58, is in stable condition at the research station.

The first cargo flight of the spring is to leave Oct. 17 — weather permitting — from the South Pole for McMurdo Station, on the Antarctic coast. From there, Ms. Douceur would fly to New Zealand for medical attention.

To Ms. Douceur and Sydney Raines, her niece, that is not soon enough. Last month, Ms. Raines started a campaign to put pressure on the National Science Foundation and Raytheon.

“My question back to them is, By what standard is a stroke considered a nonemergency?” said Ms. Raines, who was raised by Ms. Douceur.

Ms. Raines has set up a Web site, Saverenee.org, and a Facebook page that urge people to call officials at Raytheon and the National Science Foundation. A petition at Whitehouse.gov has more than 700 signatures. Ms. Raines has enlisted the help of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who wrote to the foundation.

“They’re saying the risk is too high,” said Ms. Douceur, who has worked at the South Pole on and off for three years. “But why aren’t you mobilizing and prepositioning planes so that when the weather breaks, you can come get me, instead of just saying, ‘No, you’re O.K., you’re going to wait’? It feels like they’re just stonewalling.”

Treating a stroke victim without access to imaging technology is difficult, said Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz, deputy director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, because it is impossible to be sure what kind of stroke occurred. “If it’s a blockage of the blood vessel, the damage is done,” he said. But if the problem is a hemorrhaging vessel, more damage could still occur, “because that blood vessel is feeding brain that’s undamaged yet.”

Photo

Ms. Douceur, in green jacket, helps to unveil a new geographic marker for the South Pole on Jan 1, 2011.

The most famous instance of a person being airlifted from the South Pole for medical reasons was that involving Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, a doctor who treated herself for breast cancer for months while stationed at the American research station. When she departed, on Oct. 16, 1999, it was the earliest in the Antarctic spring that a plane had taken off, according to The Antarctic Sun, a newspaper put out by the United States Antarctic Program, which is run by the National Science Foundation. She died in 2009 of a recurrence of breast cancer.

Temperatures must be higher than minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit for most planes to land at Amundsen-Scott or the fuel will turn to jelly. While that threshold has been crossed at the South Pole recently, the temperature still regularly dips to 70 degrees below zero.

“A risky rescue flight might not only jeopardize the health and safety of the patient but that of the flight crew and personnel on the ground at South Pole as well,” said Deborah Wing, a spokeswoman for the National Science Foundation.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Ms. Douceur and Raytheon are also tussling over whether a medical attendant should be on the Oct. 17 flight. She says she is worried about the effects of flying on her already oxygen-deprived brain and wants a medical professional on board. Raytheon has offered to send an unspecified “attendant,” she said. The company declined to comment.

Flying into Amundsen-Scott during the Antarctic winter, which runs from mid-February until late October, is indeed dangerous, said Col. Ronnie Smith, a former Air Force navigator who has flown there about 300 times.

“It’s like no other airfield in the U.S.,” Colonel Smith said. A pilot landing a plane there in winter, when it is dark 24 hours a day, would be flying blind “because you can’t install lights under the ice,” he said.

“You need low wind conditions, because even a 15-mile-per-hour wind will blow the loose snow around 100 or 200 feet up in the air,” Colonel Smith said.

A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2011, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Worker at South Pole Station Pushes for a Rescue After a Stroke. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe